


I'm Sweet Dee and the Joke's on Me

by DollBones



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Borderline Personality Disorder, Depression, F/M, Gen, Mental Illness, Other, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-18
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-27 12:26:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6284539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DollBones/pseuds/DollBones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sweet Dee's spent her whole life being abused by those around her.  It's alright, though, because someday she'll become a star and show them all.  Especially Dennis. (Takes place in Season 11 before the episode Mac and Dennis Move to the Suburbs)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. PatheticGirl43

First, Dee made sure that the door to the room was sufficiently locked; Dennis and Mac lay sleeping mere feet away in the living room of her apartment and she couldn't risk one of them waking up and wandering in.  Especially not Dennis.  He and his lovestruck boytoy might have invaded her home and every other aspect of her life, but damn it, they would not invade this.  Video diary time.  She adjusted the camcorder on its stand in front of her bed, casting a quick look into the floorlength mirror along the other wall to assess her appearance.  Her long blond hair looked a little dry, but other than that she looked pretty good.  Clearing her throat, she turned the camera on, stared into the lens, and started to speak.

"Hello diary," she began, keeping her voice low, "It's May 2nd, 2016, 12:45 am.  I'm alone.  Again.  Well, not really.  Dennis and Mac are in the other room.  They're still living with me, taking advantage of my good graces and driving me fucking nuts.  He he."  Laughing nervously, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear so as to make visible to the camera the giant sparkling hoop earrings she'd bought earlier that day (50 bucks and that had been the sale price but man did they look  _good_ ).  She also arched her shoulders back so that her tits pressed up more prominently against her long-sleeved lapis blue shirt (was it hers, or was it Dennis'?  It was so hard to tell these days, what with them living together and his laundry getting mixed up with hers), which she had changed into specifically because it made the blue in her eyes pop.  Dee smiled, knowing that the rose-tinted gloss she'd applied to her lips made her smile pop as well, and continued.

"Yeah, it's because of those two idiots that I haven't filmed in so long.  I can never get a goddamn moment of peace to myself anymore."  She stopped, realizing that she was snarling, her volume getting a little too high, and took a moment to step back and plaster on another smile.  "But enough about them," she chirped brightly.  "More about me."  

Suddenly, she felt her smile falter and tumble down, down, into the black pit deep inside herself from which it came.  A sensation of cold, queasy anxiety wormed its way into her stomach.  "Umm..." she hawed.  Her mind was empty.  Nausea swelled up in her throat as she battled the urge to puke.   _Think of something, you bitch!_ an inner voice screamed at her.   _You have a life outside the gang.  You've got stuff going on! ... Right?"_

She continued to stare at the lens, painfully aware of the seconds dragging on with interminable slowness, wide-eyed and stock still on her bed like a rabbit caught in headlights.  In the distance, she could hear Mac snoring in a deep slumber on the floor.  Dennis let out a whimper, turned restlessly in the hammock.  Must be a bad dream.  He'd been having a lot of those, Dee mused.

More time passed.  Perspiration gathered on her brow.   _Come on bitch.  Say something.  Say something.  Say something!_  

At last, she couldn't take it anymore and blurted out the first thing that came into her head, complete with a Southern-belle accent:

"Well, after all, tomorrow  _is_ another day."

 

 

The next morning, Dee came out of her bedroom to find Mac and Dennis lounging on her couch in their bathrobes, talking enthusiastically about something.  They both balanced cereal bowls upon their laps, ignoring the perfectly good coffee table right in front of them; Dee's eyes narrowed with a twinge of rage: high spill potential.  As she got closer, her fears were confirmed by the sight of a couple milk stains already on the sofa.  Goddamn it.

"What are you two dickbags going on about?" she sneered.  "I see you've already started on ruining my things."

Dennis looked up at her with that bitchy scowl of his, annoyed that she'd cut off the flow of conversation.  "What are you talking about, Dee?" he said impatiently.

"You assholes ruined my couch!" Dee screeched.

He glanced down at the milk soaking into the sofa cushion between his thighs; his face relaxed into a broad grin, and he laughed.  "Oh, oops!  Well, it's about time you properly cleaned this thing, anyway.  Am I right?"  He nudged Mac, who snickered.

"Yeah, Dee.  Like, your whole apartment has become a shithole.  We can't live in filth!"

"Absolutely not," Dennis agreed.

"You guys are the ones who created the filth!"  Dee shouted, indignant.

" _Why_ are you yelling?"

"Yeah, why are you yelling?" Dennis chimed in.

Mac raised his chin authoritatively, speaking to her as if she were a child.  "Dee, you can't just come barging in and making all these loud bird noises this early in the morning.  Dennis had a rough night last night and he's very sensitive now."

Dennis pouted, placing his bowl upon the coffee table and bringing his hands up against his chest.  "I'm very sensitive, Dee!" he echoed.    

Dee clenched her fists, breathing heavily.  Oh, how she hated them when they were like this, putting up a united front against her.  Dennis and Mac's relationship had always been a strange and turbulent one, had even grown toxic in recent years, but when they were getting along, they tapped into this weird synchronicity, firing off insults and finishing each others' sentences.  To the other members of the Gang, she would say it irritated her so much because it showed how stupidly codependent the two were.  To herself, she admitted it was actually because she was jealous of their intimacy.  That special intimacy was supposed to have been reserved for her and Dennis alone.  For Christ's sake, it was the one fucking thing she had with him, and Mac was ruining it.

 

"Oh, you're sensitive?" she said to Dennis.  "You had a rough night?  Try having rough _days. Weeks.  Months._ Years!"

"Please, you've never had it rough, Dee," Mac scoffed, leaning forward, milk and cereal sloshing onto the sofa.  

Dee threw up her arms in frustration.  "Are you kidding me?  I get treated like shit by you guys every day!  I wore a back brace until I was 20.  The kids at school called me The Aluminum Monster!"

"But you grew up in a big, fancy house and your father wasn't a drug dealer, so..."

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know you had to be white trash in order to have a shitty life!"

Mac pointed at her accusingly.  "I remember how you were in high school.  You were a spoiled, snobby brat who thought you were better than everybody else even though you were a total loser."

Dee cracked a vindictive grin. What an oblivious moron he was.  "Congratulations, you've just described the man you've been living with for the past 20 years," she pointed out, gesturing towards her brother.

Dennis's eyes swiftly turned into dangerous, icy gimlets. "Dee, I will throw you into the river," he rasped.

"I'll throw _you_ into the river, asshole!"

"Shut up, bird!"  Mac screamed. He and Dennis immediately burst into raucous laughter.

"Big Bird is more like it, considering how ugly and yellow her hair is now," Dennis added between giggles.

"Ha ha, big bird!"  

More laughter.

 

Seething, Dee turned and walked out of the room.  "Motherfuckers," she murmured.

 

 

 


	2. Aluminum Monster

Dee was sixteen and choking back tears.  Behind her in the school hallway, a crowd of kids were chanting "Aluminum Monster" over and over, pointing and laughing.  One of the loudest voices belonged to her brother, watching her with a smug, shit-eating grin; he'd eagerly joined the taunts and jeers once they got going, always happy to follow the crowd.   _Asshole_ , she thought angrily, a hard lump forming in her throat.  Sniffling, she kept her back to the crowd and tried to walk as quickly away as possible.  Her back brace, the cause of all her misery, made the process of fleeing difficult, pinching into her skin with every step and emitting metallic creaks and rattles that incited further humiliation.

She made it into the girls' bathroom before she burst out crying.  There was a girl washing her hands by the sink and Dee yelled at her, her voice ragged and ugly, "Get out of here!"  Startled, the girl quickly high-tailed it out of the room.  Dee dove into one of the stalls and fell to her knees, cradling her head in her hands. Her body shook with hard, racking sobs.  Letting out a mournful wail, she yanked violently at the hem of the dress she'd chosen to wear that day.

How stupid she'd been to try to make herself look pretty, how foolish to think that today she would finally be happy.  The dress she'd picked out that morning was the result of a mother-daughter shopping trip on Sunday.  After two hours of ridiculing every aspect of her daughter's appearance and dismissing the clothing that Dee selected, her mother had decided that the soft pink, lacy-sleeved dress was the "least offensive" item.  Monday morning, with excitement swelling in her chest, Dee rose extra early to do her makeup to match precisely that of the model in a photo she'd ripped out of Seventeen magazine.  She painstakingly curled her hair so that it fell in loose, elegant waves like those of a vintage movie star.  Twirling in front of her bedroom mirror, she'd had a surge of optimism.  The finished look was beautiful, stunning.   _She_ was stunning.  Looking at herself, she'd thought,  _Today has to be a good day.  It has to._

So when Adriano Calvanez turned and gaped at her in the noisy shuffle from 3rd to 4th period, it was all the more devastating when he said, "Well, well, well, looks like the Aluminum Monster tried to doll herself up today.  Save yourself the embarrassment, loser."  She'd stood there, cheeks burning, too shocked and hurt to move.  Chuckling, Adriano called, "Hey, everybody!  Come look at the Aluminum Monster!"  Then a dozen faces had turned to look, their eyes piercing into her.  She saw Dennis standing with his girlfriend Maureen Ponderosa by her locker, looking at her with amusement.  Adriano started whooping "Aluminum Monster!" and pretty soon everyone else was, too.  

Retching, Dee hung her head over the toilet.  It wasn't like she'd been surprised by Dennis' betrayal.  Dennis had always been a sadistic asshole to her.  Gripping the cold porcelain, she thought back upon all the years of mistreatment she'd endured.  Breaking her toys when they were little.  Sneaking spiders and other nasty bugs into her lunchbox.  Cutting her hair while she slept.  Spreading ridiculous rumors about her around the school.  Telling ugly boys that she liked them.  Stealing her makeup.  Insulting her every single day of her life.  She couldn't depend on him to protect her from anyone.  Dennis wasn't like other people.  Ever since they were kids, she'd understood that he was warped, damaged deep down in his marrow.  You couldn't expect him to act like a normal, decent human being.  Still, it was confusing.  If there had been something wrong with how she looked, you bet he would have jumped on it immediately.  But he'd said nothing to her through breakfast, through the 15 minute car ride to school.  Maybe he'd purposely remained silent, waiting for her to be slaughtered by their classmates, she thought.  Probably.  What a dick.

Dee rubbed her eye, hand coming away smudged with kohl pencil.  Taking a deep breath, she rose unsteadily and walked out of the stall to one of the sinks.  She gazed into the mirror, grimacing at the damage.  She looked like shit.  Her eyeshadow had smeared all around her eyes and mascara ran in muddy rivulets down her face.  It looked almost like the makeup those ancient tribesmen put on before they went to battle.  War makeup, she thought.  Oh well.  At least there were only a few hours to go and the school day would be over.  And then there were four days left before the weekend, she thought again with a sinking feeling.  Goddamn it.  Summoning up every ounce of courage she had and arranging her features into a stony death glare that would penetrate into the very souls of anyone who dared to laugh at her, she fluffed up her hair and walked out into the hall.

 

 

Dee remained silent through the car ride home, staring out the window at the houses whirring by.  When she'd first gotten into the car, Dennis had attempted to start a conversation, some bogus shit about seducing one of their teachers or whatever, and had looked hurt when she rebuffed him.  Good.  She could feel the tension mounting from his side of the car, a muscle in his jaw twitching and clouds of distress gathering in his eyes.  Dennis hated being ignored.

At last when they halted at a red light, he turned to her and said, "Alright, what's with you today?"

"Nothing's wrong," Dee replied curtly.  "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Why aren't you speaking to me?"

She glowered at him despite herself.  "I don't _have_ to speak to you, Dennis.  I don't have to say a goddamn thing.  It's bad enough that you're my brother and I'm forced to be around you, even though I can't fucking stand it."  She brought her face to his, hissing.  "I hate you.  You're a piece of shit.  And when I grow up and move out, I'm never gonna see you again.  There.  Happy?"

 

 

Luckily, they had stopped only a mile away from home, so it didn't take that long for her to walk the rest of the way once Dennis forced her out of the car.  Her back was on fire by the time she walked through the front door, though, and her dress had been torn by a mangy stray dog that had attacked her.  She'd also broken the heel on one of her gold sandals.  Looking on the bright side, she thought, she'd fared much better than the previous times Dennis had dropped her off in the middle of nowhere.  

When she came into the kitchen, limping on her broken shoe, her mother was there to greet her with a look of disdain.  "Dear God, Deandra, what have you done to yourself?  Haven't you any pride?"  She examined with horror the ruined outfit.  "Is that the dress I bought you?"

"I got attacked by a stray dog because Dennis shoved me out of the car and I had to walk home again."

"Well, I'm sure you said something that warranted it," her mother replied snarkily.  "Really, Deandra, I don't know why you can't be nice to your brother."

"He's the one who's mean to _me_ _!_ "  

Her mother frowned, raising a hand to her ear.  "You don't have to shout."

 _Oh my god, I can't deal with this._ Dee let out a sigh and charged up the stairs.  She flung open the door to her room, slammed and locked it, and plopped face-down into the plush pink softness of her bed.  Her surroundings offered their familiar comfort.  This was her sanctuary: pink everywhere, a collection of stuffed animals, movie posters and photos of famous Hollywood stars plastered over the walls, a white vanity table cluttered with a massive assortment of cosmetic tubes, and a dresser piled high with issues of various fashion magazines and play bills.  Slowly getting up and trudging across the room, she moved the pile of magazines to reveal a small, light-blue book with the word "Diary" emblazoned on the cover in giant, glittery letters.  Dee lay on her belly on the bed.  She flipped to an empty page, grabbed a pen from behind her pillow, and began to write.

_April 5th, 1993,_

_Today was awful.  As long as I have this back brace, all the kids at school will see me as is the Aluminum Monster.  I hate Dennis.  He makes fun of me more than any of them, and he's my twin brother.  Sometimes I think he does it because he's afraid that if I get more popular, it will bring down his rank by comparison.  How sick is that?  I'll show him, though.  I'll show all of them.  When this brace comes off, I'm heading straight toward Broadway, where my talent will finally get a chance to shine.  I'll be beautiful, rich, and famous, while all the cool kids will grow up to become used housewives and fat office turkeys.  And Dennis will be a homeless crackhead blowing dudes for cash.  Yeah, that's more like it._

 

She read over what she'd just written, the ink smudged in some places by tear stains, and was about to write more when she heard the door unexpectedly fling open in the room next door, Dennis' room.

"What do you mean, you're breaking up with me?" she heard Dennis cry out.  His voice had a hysterical edge, like he was standing precariously atop a tall precipice and could plunge with one false movement into deep and unfathomable doom.

 _Uh-oh,_ Dee thought.

There was a moment of silence as the person on the other end of the line spoke, save for the sound of footsteps moving frantically back and forth.  Dennis was pacing the room like a caged beast.  Dee could almost see him, his wiry frame tensed up like a steel trap about to spring, his fingers raking through his brown curls.

"No, Maureen, wait a second," he pleaded.  "You can't do this to me.  Not again.  We're so good together, baby.  I don't understand why--"

This would mark the fourth time Maureen had broken up with him, Dee reflected, experiencing a dose of schadenfreude at her brother's misfortune.  Served him right.  She crawled across the bed, placing her ear eagerly against the wall to hear more clearly.

Her brother was breathing fast and uttering tiny despairing moans.  A loud crash indicated that he'd knocked something onto the floor.  "Clingy?" he said, and Dee recognized by the strain in his tone that he was close to snapping.  "Are you kidding?  Lots of people call their girlfriends seven times a day.  It just shows how much I like you.  Listen: You're the meaning in my life. You're the inspiration."  An anxious laugh.  "So what if it's from a song?  That's a great song."

 _That_ is _a great song,_ Dee thought.    

A sob broke through the air.  When Dennis spoke again, there was no mistaking that he was crying.  "Maureen, please...I love you."

Silence.  Then a click of the phone being turned off.  Then a sudden blast of force and sound exploding at the side of Dee's head as the phone was hurled against the wall.  She fell back onto the bedspread, scared out of her wits, as Dennis unleashed an enraged, primal scream. 

 _"Fuck you, Maureen!  I hate you!_ " he ranted.  " _I hate you, you fucking bitch!  I will come into your room at night and chop your head off with an axe!  I'll rip your heart right out of your chest and bury it in my backyard!_ "

More loud crashing noises as he threw other things against the wall, followed by indistinct, crazy-sounding muttering dissolving into child-like crying.  Dee heard him leave the room.  In no time, there was a knock on her door.

"Dee?" Dennis said in a pathetic voice.  "Open up.  I-I need to talk to you."

Unbelievable.  Dee was expecting this.  He always came to her when he was dumped.  It was the audacity that struck her.  How could he think that she would comfort him now?

The knocking turned into a wild, desperate pounding.  "Please, Dee.  I feel really bad right now and I don't know what to do."

She rolled her eyes and went over to unlock the door.  This was how they were the way they were.  She would always give in to Dennis.  No matter how badly he treated her, she would never turn away from him, would never leave him.  They were twins, bound together for life by birth.  This was how they'd always been and would always be.

Dee steeled herself as Dennis predictably latched onto her and pressed his wet, sobbing face into her chest.  As always, she held him and murmured comforting words, letting him cry it all out of his system.

An hour later, he finally pulled away.  She watched him turn towards the door.  He never thanked her or anything in the moments that he came to her.  However, before he left this time, he turned to her and said, "You know, for the record, I liked how you looked today.  Those savages don't know shit."

She smiled, pleasantly surprised, and he closed the door behind him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited because I just realized that Jerry Maguire didn't come out until 1996. Oops.


	3. Golden Geese

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dee and Dennis share a moment.

Dee slumped against a booth inside Paddy's, swigging from a bottle of beer.  It was noon and the bar was empty save for Dennis and some sad-sack old man in the far corner.  Mac, Charlie, and Frank were off carrying out a scheme involving the Waitress; Dennis had (unwillingly) opted out after Charlie screamed at him nonsense about "ruining my hopes and dreams," and Dee had just been ignored.  Whatever, like she would have gone anyway.  She gulped down the drink, wincing from the burn of alcohol.  It had taken a half hour for her to scrub out the milk stains and other unsavory substances from the sofa cushions once Mac and Dennis had left her apartment.  Another half hour to clean up the debris they'd left in their wake.  Feeling just a tad wasted, she aimed the now empty beer bottle at a trash can, threw, and missed.  The bottle shattered to pieces on the floor.  

Dennis, who'd been idly flipping through a magazine from behind the bar, jumped like she'd launched a grenade and shot her a reproachful look.  "What the fuck are you doing?  You almost hit me!"

Dee belched.  Okay, maybe she was more than a little wasted.  "I wish I would have, dickhole."

He put his hands on his hips and furrowed his brow at her.  "What is with you today?  You're drunk in the middle of the afternoon."

"You're not the boss a' me.  I can do w-whatever I want," Dee slurred, popping the cap off another beer.  She tilted it towards her mouth and chugged down half, slammed it down onto the table.  Swept up in the warm tide of booze, she swooned and swayed a little in her seat but quickly recovered herself, narrowing her eyes at her brother.  "Maybe I'm a lil' tired of cleaning up after you n' your idiot latchkey...lackey...all the time."

Dennis scrutinized her in disgust.  "Congratulations, Dee.  You seem to be reaching exciting new lows.  Accusing your twin brother and his dear friend in their time of need of driving you to drink."  He shook his head in mock dismay.  "What a nice person you are."

She flapped a limp hand at him dismissively.  A few years ago, this comment would have stoked a flame in the constantly raging furnace inside her.  Instead, she uttered an apathetic groan. "Do you even hear the words coming out of your mouth sometimes, or are you just that delusional?"

Seeming to relish the accusation, Dennis chuckled.  "You're the last person who should be talking about delusions with your sad little acting dream," he said.  "When are you going to give that up?"

There was a beat of silence, Dee staring at him, the room swimming all around her and the fire inside her raging, burning her up.  A million insults she could say to him in return cut through the mushy sludge that was currently her brain, vicious and fanged with fury.  So it was a surprise for both of them that she started crying.  She sat there, the tears running down her cheeks, horrified at herself but unable to stop.  A nearly indestructible shell of armor accumulated over a lifetime of abuse pierced by a remark that had become as mundane as cornflakes.  One of the few sources of real pride she had was her resilience against others' tactics to tear her down.  Now here she was, oozing snot.  Distantly, she lamented how blotchy and gross her face must look (she'd always been an ugly crier), then wondered why the fuck she cared.

Waves of apprehension and confusion rippled across Dennis' face, then alarm.  "What...what are you doing?  Stop it, it's...annoying to me," he said weakly.  He looked all around the room, as if making sure that there weren't any witnesses.  Satisfied, he warily moved towards her.  "Dee, come on now..."

She kept on crying, too drunk and too overwhelmed by emotion to form a coherent response.

Hovering over her, he placed a hand on her shoulder which she immediately shrugged off.  He was standing close enough to her that she could almost feel the sigh whistling through him.  "Come on, sis," he pleaded.  His voice had gotten uncharacteristically gentle.  "You know I was just...you know...playing with you."

She gathered enough breath to speak.  "Oh, is that what you call it?  Playing?"

Dennis shrugged.  He continued on in a halting, uncomfortable manner.  "You know, it's the game we have...We exchange lighthearted barbs.  I say something mean to you and then you fire back with something mean to me...It's what we do. It's _fun_."

"Making fun of me is fun for you, " Dee said dejectedly.

Again, he shrugged, a frown tugging at his lips.  A weird, empty look had come into his eyes.  "Not just you. Uh...everyone.  I...for some reason, I really, really like being mean to people.  I don't know why."  He blinked, and the look was gone.  He gazed at her as if seeing her for the first time. "It's more fun with you because you don't take it.  You always throw something else right back in my face.  You're tough."

Dee wiped away a few stray tears, perking up a little.  "You think I'm tough?" she asked quietly.

Realizing what he said, Dennis stammered, a flush spreading over his cheeks.  "Yeah.  I mean, only because I've pushed you to that point.  Survival of the fittest, Dee."  He regained his composure, turned solemn.  "It's a cruel world out there.  See, you don't realize this, but I've spent my entire life training you to face the harsh rigors of this existence."  He cocked his head at her.  "You ought to thank me, really."

Dee was about to question this, but reminded herself that in her brother's twisted mind it was meant to be nice.  In her brother's twisted mind, all interactions were also regarded more like business transactions, and he would only continue being nice to her if he received something in return for how nice he was being.  So she nodded appreciatively.  "You know what?  Thank you, Dennis," she said, and realized that she meant it.

Dennis beamed with pleasure.  There was a shyness in his smile, though, as if he'd said something he shouldn't have, revealed too much of an actual feeling.  Dee found herself smiling as well.  An idea came to her.  "Hey, you wanna blow off work and get drunk with me?" 

He looked relieved.  "Oh yes.  Absolutely."

He scooted in next to her on the bench--completely ignoring the other side of the booth, she noticed even in her shitfaced state.  Their shoulders touched, his thigh grazing against hers.  Oh well, not like they ever had much of a concept of personal space.  Dee passed him a beer and they clanked bottles together.  Leaning on each other, they threw their heads back and drank.  This was how it always was and how it always would be, Dee thought, a fuzzy glow spreading through her.  They were twins, linked together inextricably, bound by birth.  They would follow each other to the end of time, to hell and back. 

**Author's Note:**

> The relationship between Dennis and Dee is endlessly fascinating to me. Since the two are in many ways alike, I thought it would make sense that Dennis seriously views his mistreatment of her as an ongoing game, a battle of wits, maybe. Considering that this is a man who sees a women's head in a freezer as a symbol of love, it could be just as likely that he is incapable of having a healthy, tender relationship with a woman. Ironically, the closest relationship he's had with a woman is with his sister Dee, the only person he's ever confessed to loving. Dee is equally incapable of having a healthy relationship with a man. The only man who she cares enough about, to the point that she obsessively yearns for his approval, is her brother.


End file.
